I have stopped counting the days or evens months that I awoke from my life changing experience. To rise with the morning sun on this birthday morn,( April 10th)setters dangling from my hair, yawning and stretching from a well rested night and bless to step out of my bed wholesome; not needing a man to make or break me..... 360 degree moment for me. A year has passed so quickly and yet there were times it stood still, taunting me.For my last three blog I wrote at milestones that propelled me through the vulnerabilities. My life as a straight spouse in the beginning can be compared to a new human life; needing developmental milestones. I am no longer counting the days to recovery; truth is there is no such thing. Habitual emotional abuse followed by such an unexpected betrayal, suspected and then faced with your man leading a double life having sex with other men is a lifetime I am not willing to spend with my mind in a straight jacket.

So even when you are saying, howdy, smiling, having a conversation or chatting up your new love interest this new life, my straight spouse title and the damage to my persona lingers and haunt me.I know I decided that I didn’t need any kind of support, opting to think that this too shall pass but this experience is more than just me outing him, his secret life expose and everyone else taking sides. This reliving each discovery, analyzing and revisiting all the evidence is a daily mental strain. It has nothing to do with loving him or wanting to be with him again, that milestone was passed the moment I decided I could not physically have sex with a man who just confessed to me whether out of arrogance or just ignorance that “my ass and mi do weh mi want wid it!”.So I have been thinking, was it inevitable that I would have found out or did he under the pressure of living a lie, trusted me too much with his name and nature.

A Year AgoIt is April 4, 2013, early Thursday morning, sometime after 4am he walks in through a opened door, finds me sitting up in the chair on my laptop.

He mumbles something and walked into the living room, sits down, unsure what to do next. You see usually I’m a sleep and pays no attention to his coming and going. He sits in the livingroom watching TV for a long time and then opts to come to bed, I’m still up, still on my laptop paying him no mind. Then finally he lies down.

He removes his shirt, but not his jeans; for it has become the norm for him to sleep in his jeans. I sit across from him detached of any emotion good or bad for this man who I know is creeping on me and living in my home to my daily annoyance.

Not long after he hits the bed he starts snoring, no longer on his back he turns on his side to expose a round reddish brownish spot on his washed out jeans. I grasped, it was a WTF moment, really, could it be. In that moment when the brilliant Jamaican sun was rising, sitting in that chair connecting all the dots just took a totally different direction. Not trivializing everything now, but ladies when your man say him nah nuh woman wid yu, believe him…..maybe the more suitable question should be “ Hey you, are you cheating on me”.

The rest is history, he got up that morning and proceeded to bag and hid his jeans pant in the dirty clothes hamper, thinking that I didn’t see the nasty spot on his jeans. I had a restless Thursday all day, my mind was like a forensic lab, linking bits and pieces of things he said, men who rode around with him daily, his trip to the country with his friends, or his practically falling off the bed, so we wouldn’t touch so I wouldn’t feel the throbbing of his anus after he engaged in down low sex with men.

How he lit up, like a new penny and skipped out of the house to his friends. That daily morning call from the worse female voice I have ever heard, and him just saying he’ll meet the person at camp later.

My voice failed me, all day Thursday, I wanted call him and asked him, and when he walked into the house 2 am Friday morning, my voice failed me again. I wanted to ask, I needed to know if he was having sexing with men, but my voice failed me. So unable to sleep I grabbed pencil & paper and I wrote what my mouth was too afraid to ask. Here is the pivotal moment, I asked him four questions: the grist of the question is summarize below

1. Was he having sex with men

2. What he taking/using cocaine (that’s whole other blog there)

3. Why did he treat me the way he was since he started to work for this new boss

4. Why didn’t he love me and but insisted on staying in my house

At the end of all those questions, I wrote my promise not to tell regardless of what his answer was, hmmmm I guess y’all thinking never tell me a secret right. He got up, did his morning routine and just before he walked through my back gate I handed him my hastily scurried note and whispered this was just between us.

He didn’t call me all day, he never ventured home during the day, I didn’t see him until sunrise Saturday morning, it was almost 5:30 am when he walked into the house. He walked in irie, once again I was on laptop not sleeping. Looking for any information on downlow men, trying to decipher the signs and clues. Always like I am doing now trying to find the answer.

I mentioned that we walked in irie, in fact unlike the night before he struck up a conversation ( can you imagine yu man a come in, almost 6 in de morning and act like chatterbox spongebob) He mentioned nothing of my note and I didn’t refer to it. They say down low men say the darnest things but this one took the cake.

He said, “yu wouldn’t believed what happened to me”, I looked up from the laptop to facilitate the conversation. He said ‘”mi go up a mi yard and fall asleep, next thing mi know mi a dream sey mi a piss up myself”. Lawdy! Lawdy! Then he turned the back of his jeans to show the wet spot in the center at the back of the jeans. (In case you are wondering neither the seat of the pants nor the front of this garment was remotely wet).

When was I going to wake up from this nightmare! Clearly he was trying to throw me off the path, with this piss-up story after receiving my note inquiring about his downlow status. He was clearly being boned hard in the ass and was draining after the sexual encounter, hence realize that I saw the damage on his pants needed to wash it out and make up a ridicules story since I was still up.

I have had to live with an inferior feeling as a woman, taking apart my relationship and taking the blame from a man who would rather slowly cruelly erode my self love, self esteem and replace that with putting up with him coming in at some ungodly hours, not fiscally contributing as a male adult in the household and just an emotion disconnect before and after sex. I was privilege to be on a man’s arm but not in his heart, that is no way to live.

In all things we give thanks... so Dr. Cooper and Nurse Debbie Thomas-Brown take a bow. The intervention was timely and executed just in time.

MY HERE AND NOW

I have come to pride myself on being a smart woman. When I was a little girl my mother would always repeat “Study-ration beat Education any day”. However when both meet and combine they ensure that the Jamaican Woman Intuition is on point and she becomes a force. I have been trying to write strong, Precious the survivor emerged and ever since then she has been trying to stay afloat, but I tell you all now through tearful eyes that I am a victim parading as a survivor.

Speaking my truth, making other women think on their relationships is a norm that I will practice. Many of us women would prefer to have ‘a’ man than have ‘the’ right man. When you look at my Ex there is no possibility that you could conceive him having sex with another man, when you listen to his homophobic rhetoric to ‘b-man’ or his yardie persona (walk, talk, dress etc) you would never think that laziness, greed, and his low own self definition lead him to live this way.

Last October I was in a motor vehicle accident, I thank God everyday that my life was spared and that my recovery is moving steadily along. It is amazing that I am here walking around, because my left knee and shin was pretty banged up for a while there.

I have been faced with my mortality since April 2013. I have chosen to ignore the ‘threats’ my Ex’s make when he speaks to mutual friends. I have changed my locks and secure my windows, door and grills to ensure that a home invasion from anyone would be at least a challenge.

But when you are laying on your back, reeling in pain from this near death experience and your Ex send you a message that this act of god was of his own obeah making, that I should have been the one to die in the accident; you despair at his hatred for you. The monster still lies within this man, the craving for his own sex won’t let him distinguish between right and wrong – cruelty and kindness. Homosexuals please stop masquerading has straight men. Please!

To all my family, friend, co-workers who helped me through the recovery, Thanks much! My rock, Nurse Debbie Thomas Brown all but took the plane to Jamaica and helped me to heal spiritually, physically and emotionally. I want to thank her publicly in this forum and hopefully one day in person for sincerely being there hour on the hour emailing after more was revealed in my twisted saga. Debbie my heart knows only gratitude and love for you. I am truly on the mend and I am up & running in the race of life again.

I want to use this medium to say that outing my Ex was not by choice and design. If I had to do it again, we would have gone our separate ways without the public disgrace. It wasn’t my intention to put us in the spotlight, making him the hero or zero of those who knows us. I can only speak my truth and live it as real as it reveals its daily unplanned offerings. I live each day in recovery mode and now realize that standing tall after years of not knowing the real deal, takes a toll on my mind set.

To my readers male or female……trust your intuition and then live your truth